Western Columbine

This native perennial grows up to 60 cm tall and produces beautiful red and yellow nodding, bell shaped flowers. Highly attractive to hummingbirds, these plants easily self-seed, creating a profusion of beautiful native plants in your garden!

Native plants are wonderful to grow for many reasons. They are generally hardy, low-maintenance, support local pollinators and are adapted to their local conditions. There are some important differences between native and domesticated plants that home gardeners should be aware of. Firstly, unlike domesticated plant species, these wild plants aren’t adapted to humans looking after their seeds each year and therefore spread their germination out over a number of years. This is an adaptation that makes total sense, as they don’t know if in any particular year there will be a flood, fire, drought, herd of wildebeest (joking!) or other challenges to the growth of their offspring. Secondly, these native seeds can be ripe starting as early as June on the BC coast (miner’s lettuce, shooting star, sea thrift, salmonberry and other early bloomers). This presents a problem, as if these seeds germinated right away the annuals wouldn’t have time to mature and set seed again before winter sets in, and younger plants of perennials may be too tender to survive a winter outside. The solution? Native plant seeds often (but not always!) require a stratification (cold period) to break their dormancy. Here are a few tips for the home gardener to address these issues and successfully grow native plants from seed:

1. Sow your seed in the Fall, as Nature would. If you don’t want to be patient, then putting your seeds in some damp soil in the fridge for 4-6 weeks can also help germination as they benefit from a cold period.
   
2. While there are technical tips that can be followed for each native species, we find generally good success by sowing seeds in a pot of sterilized potting soil in early Fall, and sinking the pot or tray into the ground in your garden where it can stay for 1-3 years.
   
3. Cover your seeding tray/pot with a fine wire mesh to keep out mice, squirrels, rabbits, cats and other critters who may want to nibble seedlings or dig up the nice potting soil.
   
4. When seedlings emerge in the Spring, prick them gently out with a fork once they have two sets of leaves (this indicates good root development so they survive transplanting better), then transplant them to their final location and water in well.
   
5. Leave the pot in place, and over the next couple of years it’s easy to continue pricking out new seedlings to transplant as they emerge.